A technical blog about web and database development discussing the various issues and problems I have experienced and overcome in my 15+ years of coding.

Thursday, 19 April 2012

I was recently asked how much I think I am worth in monetary value to a company and this got me to thinking that in this global economy
in which India and China are churning out IT developers at factory rates all willing to put bids in for huge pieces of work on vworker.com for $200
and then spend their whole time on sites like this asking for help I wonder what my readers think someone with a CV like my own would be worth in today's
IT environment.
My online CV can be found here but here is a cut down version of it.

Overall Skillset

Over 15 years of SQL development work. From relational to real-time VLDB's I have designed, developed and maintained systems from MySQL to MS SQL 2008 (and soon SQL 2012)

Developed a large number of systems
(200+) that are still running that use 3 versions of a system I personally developed (back and front end). These systems offer the sometimes unobtainable mix of a high turnaround to increase sales through very short development times, very customisable, good performance and an ease of maintenance that means most of the bugs and setup errors are fixed at the press of a button. These systems currently compete with the market leader in our field at a fraction of the cost.

I have a solid grounding in both object orientated and procedural development methodologies.

Caching, minification, compression and other optimisation techniques both database and front-end side.

JavaScript widget development including creating a number of custom JS widgets as well as creating JavaScript reliant sites that are progressively enhanced.

Automated tasks to report, analyse and fix potential issues all without a finger being lifted due to data driven database systems.

Good coding practises that can improve old systems written in legacy languages like ASP Classic including how to limit 3rd party COM object and other object re-use, reduction of logging, regular expressions that don't create catastrophic backtracking and other well known but sadly untaught tricks of the trade such as how to debug problems.

Developing and now selling my own Windows Applications including the Twitter HashTag Hunter Application that allows new site owners to find the @accounts and #hashtags they should be following and using by scanning Twitter for certain keywords without getting you blocked.

Developing 5 WordPress plugins that have been well received by the SEO community as well as other WordPress users. These include plugins to Automatically add tags to posts imported into site (AutoBlogging) without using 3rd party plugins. Another favourite is the Strictly-TweetBot that allows users to post multiple Tweets to multiple Twitter accounts whenever posts are published. The options for each Tweet include the ability to add tracking codes, content analysis to block or allow the post and the use of tags or categories as #hashtags in the Tweet. I have even fixed problems in other well known WordPress plugins that were key to integrating with WordPress.

Still on the subject of WordPress I have written a 3 part "Survival Guide" for Microsoft programmers new to Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP get their heads round the many problems WordPress and a LAMP system can throw at you that covers basic SSH terminal commands, Performance tools, Plugins to install and to avoid and security options to prevent your site from being hacked.

Developing and releasing a large number of free scripts, projects and functions for readers of my www.strictly-software.com site. From HTML Encoders (that encode properly), to SQL performance tuning and SQL injection clean up scripts my site is a key source of information for techies around the world.

I am also a developer of a wide range of free online tools which can be found at tools.strictly-software.com including de-packers and reformaters, encoders, compressors, scanners and one of the first online Twitter Translators.

I am an expert in Regular Expressions and SQL Injection detection. I also was one of the first people to discover the SQL Denial of Service attack that is possible on certain sites that allow users to enter complex search patterns. I also regularly list common hack vectors and de-encrypt SQL injection attacks so that people know what they are doing.

Having to defend critical systems from constant hackbots, scanners, spammers and content scrapers I have over the years become an expert in ways to reduce "bad" traffic through various means including .htaccess rules, trick robot.txt files, free advertising through blocking image hotlinking and using real time data analysis to determine spoofers from humans and BOTS.

On the other side of this coin I have also created many SEO tools (both white and blackhat) that include apps for proxy hunting and checking performance, content scraping without overloading servers or being blocked as well developing directive based languages for scraping with ease.

I have developed a number of BOTS, Web and Windows Services, as well as writing regular expressions to parse HTML from external sites, creating my own two step CAPTCHA's to beat BOTS and many other techniques.

As well as being a keen sportsman into martial arts, badminton and football I am also the creator of the term "Techies Law" and "Job Rapist".

I would suggest taking the time to read my full online CV or a cut down version on LinkedIN before taking a minute out of your day tell me what you think someone with this wide ranging skill set should be paid for an annual salary in the UK.

Remember £1 is about $1.60 or €1.22.
If you have another answer please write a comment and remember you can only vote once as the poll is blocked by IP and cookie so you can only vote once!
&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://polldaddy.com/poll/6151509/"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;How much should a person with these skills be paid?&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br/&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;
&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;span style="font:9px;"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;(&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://www.polldaddy.com"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;polls&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;)&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/span&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;
Thank you

Try reading the notes I left about all these problems in the discussion board on WordPress - and feel free to fix it OR to do whatever you want to it ( which as I stupidly presumed was the idea behind open source, GPL and plugin development on WordPress ).

There is absolutely no incentive for me to fix bugs for people who set up unusually directory structures and then expect the plugin to work when the whole idea of the plugin was to make it quick by bypassing all the Wordpress calls that all other plugins seem to do on every post - it is a pure SQL solution and if it doesn't work for you I suggest using another plugin as I stopped supporting it some time back.

I would check the source code if I were you to look for the issue there.

Safe To Buy?

This is my blog, clicking on the links will take you to my main site www.strictlysoftware.com which is HTTPS, shows the security padlock, and is safe to purchase from. More apps and plugins may be added soon and this is this place you will buy them from.

Who is Strictly-Software?

I'm a systems architect with 20+ years of IT experience
I currently work for myself as well as for a number of companies including one of the UK's leading recruitment software houses, having created 3 versions of their leading jobboard software.
I also work on multiple Horse Racing websites and have even developed my own automated betting BOT.
My history includes jobs at OCR specialists, a Management Consultancy and an Ofcom director run Telecoms company.
I'm an experienced developer with skills including .NET, C#, JavaScript, VB, ASP, PHP, HTML5, XHTML, CSS, SQL and MySQL.
I have developed my own JavaScript frameworks, markup languages, Windows and Web services. I have also made many Windows form applications plus I have developed numerous 5 star rated WordPress plugins.
On top of that I have created popular online tools and scripts that have been used by thousands of companies as well developing software that runs over 250 currently live websites.
I specialise in automation having created tools that enable feed mashups, automated scraping, auto-blogging and automatic SEO optimisation.
If you want to hire me then please email me using the contact link in the footer.